Smart Strategies Chosen By Money Launderers in the UAE

Money laundering refers to the illegal transfer of money, regardless of the manner of which it is done. Its core objective is to earn profit. The UAE is a major commercial driver in the region and unfortunately it is vulnerable to money laundering. Though, the UAE leadership and laws have taken several measures to combat this crime, the rogue money launderers still find out ways to process the illegal money.

Why Money Launderers are Doing This?

Money laundering happens for a very simple reason; all the money that is generated from crime needs to be usable somewhere. If someone earns millions from committing fraud, theft, or any other crime, they cannot keep or spend the money openly. The money in their accounts will then be evidence of their indiscretions. Thus such earnings are laundered to different countries, through accounts, and are broken into several different pieces, so they do not seem to be illegally earned anymore.

Smart Strategies by Money Launderers

Clever money launderers follow a variety of ways for money laundering. Some of them are straight-forward while some of them are sophisticated strategies. Check out the possible and smart ways these money launderers use to illegally and discreetly launder money.

Smuggling

This is the most direct way to launder money. Hidden cash in large quantities is packed between other shipments and taken out of the country. This cash is then converted to the local currency in a country with more lax currency related laws. Often, the launderer has links in the law enforcement agencies of the country where they take the money, to ensure that the money is safely converted into ‘legal money’.

Bank Capture

The money launderers take charge of a controlling interest in a bank. They do this with a foreign financial institution and illegally transfer money through that bank.

Structuring

This is again a common way of money laundering in UAE. In this illegal procedure, the money launderers act very smart and take smaller sums of cash and deposit them in the bank. Then, they also buy money orders and bearer instruments.

Cash-intensive Companies

These types of companies are beneficial for the money launderers as they receive criminally and validly derived cash, yet show it as valid gains. Generally, the company does not have variable cost; this is why it is difficult to determine about the sales-disparities. Cash intensive companies in UAE can be companies of tanning beds, strip clubs etc.

Casinos

Casinos are one of the places in UAE where money laundering is rife. The way this works is very simple; the perpetrator buys chips to play with using the stolen money. The casinos, naturally, do not and cannot track the source of the money. Then the launderer can simply convert the chips back to cash, and pretend that the earnings are gambling winnings.

Money laundering is a very serious violation and they are being actively hunted by many different agencies. The government of UAE realizes how damaging laundering is for their economy, and thus have many initiatives in place to curb money laundering.